Route to the Soul

A romantic mixture of emotion and practical tips from two young students discovering themselves and life as they recount their adventures away from home. The Student and her boyfriend share their passion for each other, travel and their pursuit of a healthy lifestyle.

Travel

Transcription of travel diaries made during the last 36 years starting with India and Nepal 1981 and including USA 1983, Syria 1993, South America 2000 and South Africa 2014 together with photographs. This is a work in progress as the diaries are transcribed, so check for updates.

The Old Dog (pictured above) is taking longer and longer on her daily walk. She is nearly 15 years old and although she is still keen and eager to go out and starts off at a lively trot she soon slows down to a very, ve..ery slow plod.

She is particularly slow going up hills, head drooped, looking glum, plod, plod, one slow step at a time. We worry she is in discomfort but if we try to turn back early she puts her anchors down and suddenly becomes extremely strong, pulling against us to continue.

One day this week we walked our usual circular route clockwise, otherwise known as the "wrong way round" to see if it made any difference. The total climb and decent, were of course, the same but the clockwise route has shorter but steeper inclines than our normal anticlockwise route. My rationale was that I can routinely run round clockwise over 30 seconds faster than anti-clockwise, so it must be easier.

Well it worked. Not only did the Old Dog keep going at a brisk pace she even broke into a trot as we speeded up to avoid the heavy, grey rain clouds bowling towards us. A sample of one isn't really significant but we'll try it again next week.

Nevertheless, a season's best by quite some margin.

The Young Dog's secret pact

A slow 2.25 mile (3.6km) walk isn't enough for the Young Dog so as the Old Dog has got slower and the walks shorter we have started to take the Young Dog out for an additional walk later in the day. So as not to upset the Old Dog we persuaded the Young Dog, which tends to yap and woof with excitement as we prepare to go out, to keep quiet. Within a few days he had learned to understand hand signals and he seems to enjoy being part of a secret pact.

Winter weather cats take to Twitter

The Young Dog likes the snow but the four cats are not so keen. Now that the weather has turned cold, windy and wet the four cats spend most of their time indoors, living in cardboard boxes or curled up on someones bed. When they get bored they investigate computer screens and walk on keyboards. One has sent an email, which fortunately was stopped by the system "Are you sure you want to send without adding a subject?" and another has made a phone call! My mum was rather surprised to receive a call from the cat. I just caught one before it sent a Tweet comprising apparently random letters but which accurately mapped out the steps of its keyboard dance. It seemed to be fascinated by the error beeps it was causing my laptop to make.

Popular series

Travel

Transcription of travel diaries made during the last 36 years starting with India and Nepal 1981 and including USA 1983, Syria 1993, South America 2000 and South Africa 2014 together with photographs. This is a work in progress as the diaries are transcribed, so check for updates.

Route to the Soul

A romantic mixture of emotion and practical tips from two young students discovering themselves and life as they recount their adventures away from home. The Student and her boyfriend share their passion for each other, travel and their pursuit of a healthy lifestyle.

Seeds & Weeds

We aren't gardeners, we don't even listen to Gardeners' World very often, but we have a large garden with plenty of potential. We favour the wild, natural look and like the birds, butterflies, frogs and other small animals but we want it to be looked after and we want to revive our vegetable patch. This section is dedicated to reluctant gardeners in constant fight against the weeds. Solidarity among the nettled and scratched.